Future Plans to Host DigitalAddict on a Home Server.

Since the launch of Digital Addict I’ve been looking into how websites are hosted, who hosts them and the average price to have space on a server. I have been looking around the interwebs and found plenty of sits that allow inexpensive hosting. I’ve also found hosts that have every option in the book available for premium loot $$$.

DA (DigitalAddict) Isn’t a huge site right now... but I plan to grow it larger. I’d like to implement features like membership and personal profile pages, a message board, a live chatroom, possibly DigitalAddict gear like t-shirts and mouse pads, who knows.

I’ve been looking at mostly going the Apache server route. It’s free open source software that allows you to convert any computer hooked up to the web to be a server. This would be a great route, depending on the computers capabilities, to have control of your own server and not be at the mercy of some third party server.



While looking around I found an Interesting article about using your iPhone as a web server! Now the size of the site that you could possible host would be pretty small and to keep it functional wouldn’t consist of anything more than some text and maybe some emotioncons. Though the iPhone server wouldn’t really be practical for what I’m aspiring to create, it is still a cool option that I plan to host something off my phone. At&t hates me already since my iPhone is hacked and I use my “unlimited” internet access tethered to my laptop all the time, stealing some more bandwidth from them would be pretty cool.



Now for a more practical idea. I’ve noticed a trend with hosting were the server is a Mac Mini. Being an Apple fan, when I saw this was possible and actually really easy to setup. I began fantasizing about having an intel based mac mini with about 500gb and 2-4gb ram. not stopping there though, the thought of having an iOmega 2Tb mini drive stacked on top of the mini.... an Apple Airport Extreme. Since they all have the same footprint a tower of them would take up less space than any pc tower.

iStat, A Must Have Download.

Ever since I got an Apple computer I noticed that there wasn't any diagnostic performance monitoring software readily available like with my old *shutters* dell.
After aimlessly wandering this complex series of tubes and wires I eventually came across iStat. If you're looking for an application to keep you updated with all the cool things your computers doing that very second than I wouldn't look much further, well maybe finish this reading this article then you can stop looking.

Here's what the developer says about iStat:
Realtime CPU graphs and a list of the top 5 CPU resource hogs. CPU usage can be tracked by individual cores or with all cores combined, to save menubar space.
Memory stats for your menubar, shown as used and free memory or wired, active, inactive and free. The memory dropdown menu shows a list of the top 5 memory hogs, as well as other useful info
iStat Menu’s realtime graph will keep your finger on the pulse of what data’s being sent and received for all network connections.
See used or free space for multiple disks in your menubar. More detail for all your disks is only a click away.
Detailed disk I/O in your menubar, including a variety of different read and write indicators.
Realtime listings of the sensors in your Mac, including temperatures, hard drive temperatures (where supported), fans, voltages, current and power. Temps can be displayed as Celcius, Fahrenheit or Kelvin.

What I say to that:
Friggen sweet. go get it here.

WANT! Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

In ways big and small, Mac OS X Snow Leopard makes your Mac faster, more reliable, and easier to use.



Refined, not reinvented.

Mac OS X is renowned for its simplicity, its reliability, and its ease of use. So when it came to designing Snow Leopard, Apple engineers had a single goal: to make a great thing even better. They searched for areas to refine, further simplify, and speed up — from little things like ejecting external drives to big things like installing the OS. In many cases, they elevated great to amazing. Here are just a few examples of how your Mac experience was fine-tuned.

New look, new features for Exposé and Stacks.

Exposé is refined and more convenient. It’s now integrated in the Dock, so you can just click and hold an application icon in the Dock and all the windows for that application will unshuffle so you can quickly change to another one. Exposé also has a whole new look. Windows are displayed in an organized grid, making it even easier to find what you’re looking for. And stacks — Dock items that give you fast access to a folder of files — are now scrollable, so you can easily view all items. You can also navigate through folders in a stack to see all the files inside it.

More reliable, higher-resolution iChat.

Having a video chat using iChat is more reliable and more accessible than ever in Snow Leopard.4 It includes technology to address many common router incompatibilities that can interfere with connections. And if iChat can’t make a direct connection, it will use the AIM relay server to create a successful chat session.

Now more people can have high-resolution, 640-by-480-pixel video chats, because the technical requirements are less demanding: You need only one-third the upstream bandwidth previously required — 300 Kbps instead of 900 Kbps. And finally, iChat Theater now offers 640-by-480 resolution, four times greater than before.

Lets set this straight! Snow Leopard is friggen sweet!

Faster, more powerful Safari.

Safari 4 is the latest version of the blazing-fast web browser. It renders web pages at high speed and delivers a range of new features, including full history search, smart address and search fields, an innovative way to display your top sites, industry-leading support for web standards, and more.

With Snow Leopard, Safari 4 delivers up to 50 percent faster JavaScript performance thanks to its 64-bit support.6 In addition, Safari is even more resistant to crashes. It turns out that the number one cause of crashes in Mac OS X is browser plug-ins. So Apple engineers redesigned Safari to make plug-ins run separately. If a plug-in crashes on a web page, Safari will keep running.

All the information above is from here.